


Frances

by wheel_pen



Series: Miscellaneous Vampire Diaries Stories [1]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ghosts, Someone from the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 11:44:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3409361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There might be a haunted house in Mystic Falls. And the ghost might be Damon’s ex-fiancée. This story is unfinished.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The bad words are censored; that’s just how I do things. I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate being able to play in this universe.

“I’ll be about an hour,” Elena reminded him as they headed through town. “And if it’s more than an hour,” she added a bit sheepishly, “call me, please.”

Stefan flashed her a grin as he drove the SUV through the tree-lined streets. “You did say she was lonely,” he agreed. “It’s nice of you to visit with her. Do you want me to drop by instead and chat a little, too?”

Elena smiled at him gratefully but declined the offer. “It won’t just be for a _little_ ,” she warned him. “And—well, she’s very sweet, but she does tend to repeat the same stories over and over. You’d be really bored,” she assured him. “And then every time after that she’d ask when we were getting married.”

For some reason this made Stefan chuckle. Mrs. Morris’s house was in the oldest part of town—the oldest that survived, anyway—and he had been pointing out where friends and acquaintances had lived in the ‘old days,’ when this part of town was new. “I hope I haven’t been boring you in advance,” he admitted. “I don’t _think_ I told you this before—“

Elena smiled and put a hand on his arm. “No, that’s okay,” she assured him. “I like hearing stories about your childhood.” Even if it _was_ one hundred fifty years in the past.

Suddenly Stefan frowned. “Sirens,” he reported to Elena, who heard nothing until they’d driven another couple of blocks. Then they began to whine faintly in her ears. “They’ve stopped,” Stefan added a moment later. “They must’ve reached—“ They turned a corner and saw where the vehicles had gone.

“Oh,” breathed Elena. A fire truck, ambulance, and police car were pulled up in front of an old two-story white farmhouse on the edge of town. Its yard was overgrown, its exterior badly in need of fresh paint, and its porch sagging underfoot as the EMTs appeared, carrying a figure out on a stretcher. “Is she--?” Elena asked in a soft voice.

Stefan pulled over and rolled down his window slightly, listening to the far-off chatter. “She’s alive,” he conveyed, and Elena let out the breath she was holding. “They think she had a stroke, but she managed to call 911. They’re taking her to County General.”

“Wow,” Elena sighed. She hadn’t really been _close_ to Mrs. Morris, or known her very long, but it was still a little upsetting to know something had happened to her. “I wonder what they’ll do with Mrs. Tubbins,” she said suddenly.

“Who?” Stefan asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“Oh, her cat,” Elena sighed. She opened her door and climbed out. “She’s so attached to her cat, I’d better just—ask or something.” Stefan followed close behind her.

“Excuse me,” Elena said to the police officer who was scribbling in his notebook by his car. “Oh, hi, Nate, I didn’t realize it was you.”

The young officer looked up. “Oh, hey, um… Elena, right?”

“That’s right,” she nodded. “Nate’s sister was on the cheerleading squad with me,” she explained to Stefan. “Natalie’s at Virginia Tech now, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, wants to be a psychologist,” Nate added, his tone casting doubt on the worth of this goal. “So she can say what’s wrong with the rest of us using even bigger words.”

Elena laughed at his comment in a way that suggested she found it all too true. “Well, I was just coming to visit Mrs. Morris,” she finally explained. “Is she going to be okay?”

Nate shrugged pessimistically. “Thought maybe she had a stroke, but they got to her fast,” he replied. “You a friend?”

“Well, I visited her a couple times a month,” Elena told him. “Church youth group, visiting shut-ins.” Nate nodded. “I was just wondering about her cat, if someone was going to check on it while she was… away.”

“Didn’t see a cat inside,” Nate admitted, “but it did kinda smell like one. She got any family around here?”

Elena shook her head. “Her son lives in Arizona, I think,” she recalled. “That’s the only family she ever talked about. Well, alive anyway.”

Nate glanced around at the nearby houses, all of which stood silent. “Neighbors don’t look too friendly,” he observed. “Not such a great part of town. _You_ wanna take the cat with you?”

Elena blinked, startled by the suggestion. “Uh, what?”

“I wanted to lock the place up, do some extra drive-bys until that son or whoever can take charge of it,” Nate revealed. “Be easier if no one had the excuse of checking on the cat. You wanna take it for a while?”

“Well, yes, sure,” Elena sputtered, trying to remember how much, on a scale of one to ten, her aunt hated cats. She feared it was in the seven or eight range.

“Or I can always keep it at my house, if someone’s allergic,” Stefan offered diplomatically. He held out his hand for Nate to shake. “Stefan Salvatore.”

“Oh yeah,” Nate replied, as though the name were familiar to him. “That big old bed and breakfast, right?”

“Right,” Stefan agreed, sensing he would not take well to being corrected.

“Great,” Elena interjected. “Well, I’ll go try to find Mrs. Tubbins, then.”

“The cat,” Stefan whispered to Nate. “See if you can find a carrier for her or something,” he advised Elena. “Or put a couple laundry baskets together to make a cage. I used to have a cat,” he shrugged when they both stared at him.

“Okay, I’ll just be a few minutes, I hope,” Elena told them, proceeding carefully up the dangerously mobile porch stairs. She opened the screen door, then pushed the main door farther ajar, the frosted design in the glass preventing her from seeing the interior of the house right away. She wished Stefan could’ve come with her; the house was dim and crowded, reasonably clean under the circumstances but musty, and heavy with… history, maybe. Well, frankly it was a little spookier than that, and Elena could no longer confidently say that supernatural forces were only fiction; every creak of the floorboards, every strange movement in one of the many mirrors (which invariably turned out to be only herself) set Elena’s heart racing. But only the owner of the house could invite Stefan to cross the threshold, and she had just been taken away in an ambulance.

“Mrs. Tubbins?” Elena called hopefully, glancing around for a carrier as well. As she entered the living room she froze, seeing a plate of food abandoned on the couch and a glass of milk spilled across a card table that was inexplicably covered in Scrabble tiles. That must be where she’d—collapsed, Elena decided. Quickly she sopped up the milk with a dishtowel, though she feared the carpet would still stink of spoiled milk soon, and put the dishes in the kitchen sink. A Scrabble tile stuck to the cloth and Elena left it on the kitchen counter; Mrs. Morris had been eccentric, sure, and had several sets of the lettered tiles spread across tables in her house. No boards for the game, though, and rarely did it look like she was actually trying to play—she’d told Elena they were for a ‘friend’ to leave her messages. Little weird, but Elena tried to play along and sometimes rearranged the tiles into messages like, “great brownies” and “gloomy day.” This seemed to amuse Mrs. Morris, which was the point.

Having cleaned up the mess Elena continued her search for the cat. The ceiling above her head creaked—ominously, Elena thought. A delicate scarf draped over a hand-shaped sculpture fluttered, apparently in some breeze Elena otherwise missed. “Mrs. Tubbins!” she called again, heading up the steep stairs. Maybe she should’ve brought some food with her as bait.

The walls of the old house had to be quite thin—it was certainly chilly here in the winter—but the silence within them was complete, with no sound betraying the presence of the outside world. It was the dead end of a quiet street, Elena reminded herself, turning on the landing to head up to the second half of the stairway. Nate and Stefan were waiting for her outside, though Stefan couldn’t _enter_ the house—She shook her head at her foolishness. It was just an old house, with unsettled boards, drafts, mice skittering in the walls (Mrs. Tubbins seemed to consider it beneath her dignity to pursue them), doors that swung open on their own—

Elena froze on the landing, icy panic shooting through her as the door to the hall closet slowly swayed, until what emerged from the blackness beyond it was—

Mrs. Tubbins.

Elena deflated with the force of her relief, feeling quite ridiculous. The fluffy reddish-orange cat meowed at her from her flat little face, as if agreeing with her self-judgment, and Elena sighed. “Well, come on, you’re going home with me for a little while,” she told the cat, who made her own way back down the stairs, waving her rear end at Elena with every step. “Until your mistress—is better,” she added.

She didn’t see a carrier, or laundry baskets, so in the end she just scooped the cat up and carried her on outside, hoping she didn’t freak out and start scratching. As she did so there was a sudden loud banging from within the house, like several doors being slammed in succession. Elena tensed in surprise, which sent Mrs. Tubbins on the defensive. Fortunately she was now out on the porch and Stefan with his fast-healing skin grabbed the cat.

“Shh, shh,” he told the creature soothingly, and Elena wondered if he had the ability to compel animals as well. “What was that noise just now?” he wanted to know. “Is there someone else in the house?” He asked this with a strange intensity, but Elena shook her head.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Eh, these old houses have weird air currents,” Nate dismissed. He was still filling out paperwork by his squad car. “You shut one door and a bunch of others pop open or closed. Happens all the time at my grandma’s.”

Elena nodded distractedly, thinking of all the things she needed to get at the store for the cat, where her litterbox would go, what her aunt and brother would say. “Thanks, Nate,” she said as she and Stefan moved back towards the car. “Where did they take Mrs. Morris? County General?”

“Yeah, think so. I’ll let the family know you have the cat,” he promised, making a note in his report.

“Do you want to hold the cat, or drive?” Stefan asked her, and since he never usually asked, she volunteered to drive.

“You seem to have the trick for keeping her calm,” Elena observed as they climbed into the car.

“I kind of went through a pet phase a few years ago,” Stefan admitted cryptically, fastening his seatbelt under the docile animal. “The house looked like Noah’s ark, Damon said. I guess I thought maybe the animals wouldn’t notice that I was different.” He said this easily but it sounded very sad to Elena.

“What happened?” she wanted to know.

Stefan shrugged a little, rubbing Mrs. Tubbins’s furry purring throat. “Some of the animals really didn’t like me,” he confessed as they drove away, headed towards the grocery store. “Mostly the herbivores, I think they sensed a predator in their midst. The cats and dogs were fine, nice even, but… They eventually died.” He pushed the cat’s long tail away from his face. “Not a surprise, of course, but I didn’t think it would bother me as much as it did.”

“A pet can be as good a friend as a person,” Elena agreed tactfully, though she had no personal experience in the matter—her parents were not ‘pet people.’ “Even better, sometimes.”

“Would you like me to keep her for you?” Stefan offered. “We have more room, and less people to bother.”

That would certainly take a lot of trouble off Elena, but she felt she couldn’t ask him to do it. “It’s fine, really,” she lied. Then she started to cave. “Erm, you don’t think Damon would—“

“Damon won’t bother her,” Stefan replied, sounding remarkably confident on this point.

Elena did not question it. “Well, if you really want to,” she conceded. “Mrs. Morris’s son will probably be here in just a couple days anyway.”

They were quiet for a moment, except for the fantastically loud purring of Mrs. Tubbins, which sounded like a rusty motor. “Are you sure there wasn’t anyone else in the house?” Stefan asked again. He seemed to have been thinking about this for a while.

“I don’t think so,” Elena repeated, frowning at him. She pulled into a parking spot in front of the grocery store. “I had to go upstairs… Maybe if they were hiding or something…” The thought was suddenly unsettling to her and she reached over to pet the cat, who turned her head away defiantly. “Why?”

“I thought I saw someone at the window,” Stefan revealed. He didn’t sound entirely confident about it. “That top window, the third floor. Or the attic, maybe.”

“Who was it?” Elena wanted to know.

Stefan shrugged. “Well, I thought it was a woman wearing green. But it was only for a second, right as you came out, and I could have…” He trailed off as he saw Elena’s expression. “What?”

For half a second Elena wondered if Stefan was trying to make a joke of questionable taste. Then she realized he wouldn’t do that and her sense of discomfort about the whole situation increased exponentially. “That house… There’s a rumor that it’s haunted,” she pointed out to him. She was about to comment on the ridiculousness of that idea, but—vampire boyfriend, so… “Didn’t you know that?” she asked instead, confused.

“No, I guess I’ve never heard that,” Stefan decided. He looked like he was thinking back a very long way. “No, nothing comes to mind,” he reiterated after a moment, coming back to the present. “What’s the story?”

“Well, it’s a woman in green who’s seen at the windows sometimes. Allegedly,” Elena explained.

Stefan blinked at her. “Seriously?” She indicated yes and he shook his head. “Maybe I _have_ heard the story before—overheard it without really listening. And it came to my subconscious when we were at the house. That happens sometimes,” he added in a reassuring tone. “I’ll probably remember where I heard it later tonight.”

This explanation made Elena feel immensely better. “Yeah, that makes sense,” she agreed. “So—we probably shouldn’t leave the cat in the car by itself, right?”

“People tend not to like that,” Stefan agreed. “Besides, she might claw your seats. Do you want to stay here while I go into the store?”

“No,” Elena decided, looking at the cat curled up on Stefan’s lap. “She seems to like you a lot. I should get some cat food and some litter, right?”

“And a box for the litter would be great,” Stefan reminded her. He started to reach for his wallet. “Let me give you some money—“

“No, that’s okay,” Elena insisted with a smile. “Let me contribute that much, since you’re taking her.” She started to open the car door, paused, and then got back in her seat and shut the door.

“What’s wrong?” Stefan asked with a frown.

“I remembered something else about the story, the story of the woman in the green dress,” she told him slowly. “It’s probably nothing, but… I think she’s supposed to be from the Civil War era.”

Stefan didn’t seem unduly concerned by this detail. “The house has been there at least that long, I remember it from when I was a boy. And it’s a popular time for ghost stories—there was so much death and chaos…” He rubbed the cat’s head thoughtfully.

“Do you remember who lived there?” Elena asked tentatively. She did not lend credence to old ghost stories, but—vampire boyfriend, so… But Stefan might easily disprove it to her satisfaction.

“Let’s see… It was the Ballard family, I think,” Stefan recalled. “Seven or eight kids and his mother. He worked for the lumberyard.” Elena sighed with relief, feeling silly for at least the second time that day. “But then they moved,” Stefan went on unexpectedly, “in the middle of the war, and—oh, yes, Dr. Hawkins bought it. Or rented it.”

“Dr. Hawkins?” Elena repeated faintly.

Stefan frowned in concern. “Yes, he didn’t live there very long, then he moved to Atlanta. It stood empty after that, for as long as—I noticed.” He’d had plenty of other things to think about than real estate starting in 1864. “What is it?”

“The ghost is supposed to be a woman who was a doctor’s wife, and he killed her and was never caught,” Elena admitted. Telling these sorts of stories at sleepovers when you were twelve always seemed like fun at the time; how little she’d ever taken them seriously. Now she tried to dredge up every detail she could. “There’s stories about how the ghost drove people out of the house all the time… When my parents were younger it was basically abandoned, until Mrs. Morris moved in.”

“Really? That’s… interesting,” Stefan commented, with a wealth of meanings behind the vague word. He paused, trying to look back through the years and bring the details to light. “Dr. Hawkins _was_ married, and shortly after the wedding, he and his wife left for Atlanta, very abruptly. They didn’t even say good-bye to her family. It was all mildly scandalous, especially because she’d been engaged to someone else—“

“A Civil War soldier?” Elena interrupted with trepidation. “Who was killed in action, and then she turned around too quickly and married the doctor?”

“Um, he wasn’t actually killed,” Stefan corrected. “He was just off fighting for a few months, and when he got back, Frances and Dr. Hawkins were already gone.”

“Frances?” Elena repeated. “That was her name? You knew them?”

“Frances Briggs,” Stefan nodded slowly. “Dr. Hawkins I only knew in passing, but… Frances’s mother and my mother were good friends. And the soldier Frances was engaged to was—Damon.”

“What?” Elena said dully, after a long moment of staring at Stefan. Her mind scrambled to add this piece to the puzzle of Salvatore history, to see if it changed the overall picture.

“It was before Katherine,” Stefan revealed haltingly, as if it were difficult to roll back so many years. “Our mother was fond of the match, Father less so. I think that’s why Damon didn’t protest too much,” he added. Damon had been very attached to their mother, Elena knew, in direct contrast to how he and his father had gotten along. “I mean, not that he didn’t like Frances, but he wasn’t really keen on the idea of settling down. Felt like he had plenty of time for that later.” His tone acknowledged the irony of this attitude.

“There wasn’t a formal arrangement until Damon finally joined the Army in 1863,” he went on. “I remember Frances being upset that he wasn’t responding to her letters… But that was pretty common, what with the way letters were delivered at the time. And yeah, you just didn’t know—were the letters just not getting through, or were they deliberately not responding, or were they too sick to write, or…” He shrugged a little, not mentioning the other possibility. “But then suddenly she married Dr. Hawkins instead, and they left for Atlanta. And then Damon came home, and… expected her to be there. I think he liked her,” he repeated, the simple comment heavy with meaning.

Elena felt a stab of anger towards this woman who had lived and died so long ago. She knew things were often complicated, that the motivations of real people were difficult to judge with all the factors they had to juggle; but all she could picture was Damon coming home after the horror of battle, to find that the woman he was supposed to marry had run off with someone else. The Damon she knew today would ‘laugh’ it off with a few caustic comments but still be deeply wounded; pre-Katherine Damon—though no paragon of sensitivity and virtue—had been described by Stefan as much more vulnerable. “She didn’t leave him a… note, or anything?” she suggested hopefully anyway, guessing the answer before Stefan shook his head.

“No, nothing,” he confirmed. Mrs. Tubbins purred loudly, heedless of their conversation, and flexed her claws into Stefan’s leg. “He was upset”—Elena understood this as understatement—“but Father wasn’t, which was strange, as it was embarrassing for us, socially I mean.” Stefan shrugged. “The whole thing was strange. I wasn’t really in Father’s confidence, so maybe I missed something.”

“Well, maybe Damon got lucky,” Elena tried pragmatically. “She doesn’t seem like a very nice person.”

Stefan shook his head quickly, though. “No, Frances wasn’t like that,” he asserted, preoccupied. “She was—a nice girl. No one even knew she was well-acquainted with Dr. Hawkins. And to not even say good-bye to her family… Well, with some of the other girls in town, it wouldn’t have been a surprise.” But with Frances, his tone implied, it _was_.

Elena watched the thoughts flit across his face for a moment. “What about Dr. Hawkins?” she probed. “Was he… nice?”

Stefan could not give a thorough answer. “My father preferred Dr. Reilly, who’d been around a long time. Hawkins had only been around a few years, and he was from the North. Sometimes people whispered that he had Yankee sympathies, but I don’t remember anything bad about him.” He frowned. “Sorry, things are kind of vague, before…” The human memories faded quickly, as though seen through a window blurred with rain. Elena nodded understandingly, though of course she really _couldn’t_ understand.

“Actually I kind of… admired Dr. Hawkins,” Stefan admitted, a bit sheepishly. “From afar. I wanted to be a doctor, too, and he seemed very modern, very intellectual. Dr. Reilly was ancient,” he added with an almost comical grimace. “I was sick a lot when I was little and he was at our house all the time. Never made me feel better.”

“So he probably didn’t kill her?” Elena surmised. “It was probably just a vicious rumor, after they left so suddenly.”

Stefan didn’t rush to agree with her as she’d been hoping he would, though. “I wouldn’t have thought so,” he replied conditionally. “But I still don’t remember hearing that story before, and I feel like I really did see a woman in green at the window. The story actually says she’s wearing green?” Elena nodded. “Frances was a redhead, she wore a lot of green.”

“Do you—have you ever met a ghost before?” Elena asked him tentatively.

Stefan smiled suddenly, in a reassuring but never mocking way. “First time for everything,” he replied.

**

Damon came home that evening with blood at the corner of his mouth; Stefan decided not to mention it. From the way he marched directly to the bourbon decanter is might just have been a nibble. “Why does it smell like _cat_ in here?” he demanded peevishly.

“I’m looking after a cat for a few days,” Stefan non-explained. “Don’t bother it.”

Damon snorted as if the suggestion were beneath his dignity. “ _I’m_ not the one who’s a danger to small, furry animals,” he sneered. Definitely just a nibble, then; small feeds usually left him irritated. “As long as Pussy Galore stays out of my way.”

“I wanted to talk to you about something,” Stefan opened, bracing himself. Damon rolled his eyes but Stefan took that as acknowledgement. “Do you remember Frances Briggs?” he asked carefully.

He saw that Damon did—of course—in the tightening of his jaw and the narrowing of his eyes. He knocked back his drink, abandoned the glass on the sideboard for Stefan to clean up, and started to walk away. “Yes,” he replied, with finality, as though nothing more needed to be said.

Stefan trailed after him through the living room and up the stairs. “Do you remember the old Ballard house, that Dr. Hawkins moved into?”

“Yes,” Damon snapped, adding in irritation, “Why are you following me?”

“Have you ever heard a rumor that it’s haunted?” Stefan persisted as Damon stalked into his bedroom. “By a woman—“ He was momentarily muffled when Damon carelessly flung his black leather jacket in Stefan’s general direction, hitting him square in the face. “—a woman in green,” he finally finished, wondering why he even bothered.

“Haunted?” Damon repeated with deep skepticism. He kicked off his boots, one of which hit the closet door and the other, Stefan’s shin. “G-d, what will these pathetic humans think up next?” He started to pull his t-shirt off.

“The ghost is supposed to be a woman who was murdered by her doctor husband, after jilting a Civil War soldier.”

Finally it seemed he was actually getting through to his brother, who paused and slowly turned around, his shirt still caught on his arms. He stared at Stefan for a long moment, assimilating the information, then yanked his shirt the rest of the way off. “Frances wasn’t murdered,” he reminded Stefan sourly. “She went to Atlanta with Hawkins.”

“I found him in Atlanta on the 1870 census,” Stefan revealed. “He was listed as widowed.”

“She could’ve—died later,” Damon muttered. After they’d left Mystic Falls. He was now distracted from his shower preparations, however.

“I couldn’t find any record of her death.”

“That’s not uncommon. Look, what are you trying to do?” Damon snapped. “You’re trying to make me believe Hawkins killed Frances and only _pretended_ she went to Atlanta with him to cover his tracks? You know I’m all about the long-held grudges,” he added, which was all too true, “but seeing as how they’ve both been _dead_ for over a hundred years, what’s the point?”

“Normally, I would agree with you,” Stefan told him dryly. “But I was at that house today, and I thought I saw a woman in green at the attic window. _Then_ Elena told me the story—“

“Oh my G-d,” Damon interrupted, in full scoffing mode. “You thought you saw a _ghost_? Please. Please, _really_?”

“Damon.” Stefan gazed at him steadily. “We’re vampires. I don’t think we can automatically dismiss ghost stories.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you saw a leprechaun,” Damon muttered, starting to undo his pants.

Stefan moved back into his eyeline. “Damon. If there’s something of Frances in that house, some… spirit or whatever, this could be your chance to make peace with her.”

“ _Make peace_?” Damon spat the words out like they were coated in acid.

“Find out what happened between her and Dr. Hawkins,” Stefan urged. “Maybe there’s a—“

“Oh, I know what happened between her and Dr. Hawkins,” Damon sneered caustically. “She said she’d wait for me, then the instant I was gone he swooped in and…” He shook his head, anger deflating. “Made her a better offer, I guess.”

“What if there was more to it?” Stefan suggested quietly.

“Even if there was, I _cannot_ believe you’re suggesting I go hunt for a _ghost_ ,” Damon pointed out.

“It just seems suspicious to me,” Stefan reasoned. “I’ve found several local stories in the newspaper archives about the house supposedly being haunted. And Dr. Hawkins didn’t do very well in Atlanta, rumors seemed to follow him…” Sinister rumors, his tone implied.

Damon heaved a huge, put-upon sigh, but Stefan saw it as a hopeful sign. “Fine. I’ll go to the scary old house and look for a ghost,” he conceded, as though he were doing Stefan a favor.

“You can’t go in, though,” Stefan cautioned. “The owner had a stroke and is in the hospital right now.”

“Don’t make things easy or anything,” Damon replied sarcastically. “I guess I’ll just look in the windows, then. Like I’m casing the joint, but for paranormal activity.”

“You should probably take a shower first,” Stefan suggested delicately, and Damon flung his t-shirt at him.

**

Later that evening—after showering—Damon made his way to the old Ballard house. Most of the houses that remained from his day had been heavily remodeled, expanded, repainted, and generally rendered unrecognizable, if they hadn’t been completely razed and replaced. This was not the part of town where aging yuppies boasted about their historical preservation efforts—these were just old houses with decaying internal structures and tiny rooms, that were bought by people who couldn’t afford to be picky about drafty windows and peeling paint. Times changed: it had been a solid middle-class block back in Damon’s human days.

He was not nostalgic like Stefan was, though, and he didn’t linger to gaze mournfully on each building while memorializing its earlier occupants, as he imagined his brother did. He was still hungry and thus a little cranky; his diet of animals with humans only as snacks was not very satisfying, and Damon was used to feeling satisfied. Or maddeningly thwarted by life, of course, but that didn’t usually apply to his meals. He trudged along the edge of the road, getting mud on his boots because these people seemed to feel that sidewalks fell into the realm of luxury, and approached the shabby house from the side. Though it was less ravaged by clumsily tacked-on additions than some of the others, he could easily spot the sagging porch, missing shingles, chipped foundation stones. The Ballards had always been so particular about keeping it in good condition, despite the overabundance of children bursting from its seams—

His thoughts carried the dangerous whiff of nostalgia and he repressed them vehemently, instead scanning the house for any signs of… What was he looking for, really? Ectoplasm dripping down the walls? A phosphorescent glow from the windows?

Suddenly he _did_ see a light through one of the windows and momentarily froze, a million thoughts racing through his mind—the most prominent of which was regret that Stefan was right. Then he realized where the light was coming from, rolled his eyes, and walked silently around to the back of the house.

A young man in baggy clothes was peering into the window, sweeping the interior with his flashlight. He did not manage to let out more than a strangled squeak before Damon compelled him to stand quietly and explain himself.

“The old lady went to the hospital, so I’m looking for anything valuable I can steal and sell for drugs,” he replied, with little imagination.

“Did you see anything?” Damon decided to ask him.

“No,” the youthful miscreant admitted with disappointment. “No expensive electronics. But sometimes old ladies hide cash or jewelry upstairs.”

“You’re such a loathsome specimen of humanity,” Damon judged harshly, “which never had a lot going for it anyway. The best you can come up with is a smash-and-grab for drugs? _Boring_.”

“Well… drugs,” the young man pointed out.

Damon shook his head, decided this person would be the first to die for the sin of banality (well, probably not the first, really), and pounced with his fangs bared. He would figure out what to do with the body later. Because humans as snacks only was really not a sustainable diet for him.

Damon had not gotten by this long by being foolish, though (er, sometimes), and he occasionally glanced around as he feasted, in case the police really did drive by as Stefan had warned him. His gaze swept across the window before him and continued on, then his brain registered the image he’d seen and he snapped back to the window—there was nothing there, nothing unusual anyway. But Damon thought he’d seen—a face.

Perfect recall brought the image back to his mind in all its crisp detail. There had been a… shimmer on the other side of the window, a suggestion of a face, a person standing there inside the house watching him. Even Damon’s altered perceptions couldn’t resolve it fully, and he wondered for an instant if it had just been his _own_ reflection, distorted by warped glass and inconstant moonlight.

Suddenly there was a banging noise inside the house, like a door slamming. Damon dropped his meal and raced to the front of the house, but no one was scrambling out the door, witness to a supernatural crime. He returned to the back, where the would-be thief was still slumped on the ground, and used the human’s t-shirt to wipe his face off. It was not a good idea to run around the neighborhood with blood dripping from his chin. More thumps and bangs echoed within the house, on the upper floors, and with another glance around for late-night peepers, Damon floated upwards, peering into each of the windows in turn. On the second floor he saw nothing but the hallway, with the stairs leading back down and several doors that were all shut tight. The third floor was the attic, dim and cluttered with the detritus of human sentimentality—boxes and bags, furniture too broken to use but not quite broken enough to discard, an artificial Christmas tree poorly wrapped in plastic. There was no sign of habitation in the dust-covered cave.

Well, old houses were often drafty. He knew, he’d lived in many. They were drafty when they were _new_ houses. Or something like a squirrel had gotten in and was wreaking havoc on the place.

Disinterested, Damon started to turn away, but paused when something in the corner caught his eye. He pressed against the window glass, turning and twisting to see inside. He could break the glass easily but that wouldn’t get him into the house, or even a better view. Finally his gaze sharpened in on the object—an old trunk, familiar in its general design, the trim and the lid style and the lock all pinning it to an era he remembered both vividly and through a haze of misperception. He’d had a very similar trunk himself; so had Stefan. Both were, in fact, resting in their _own_ attic right now, inscribed in that particular script with their initials.

This one was inscribed with the letters FEB.

Frances Ellen Briggs.

Or any of a million other combinations, Damon immediately told himself, from a million other family histories, geographic locations, eras.

But still.

He chided himself for believing Stefan’s ghost story. His anger flared, childishly, at Elena for telling it to him. Old fury, thick and slow and slightly crusty, welled up towards Frances, towards John Hawkins, towards his father who’d cavalierly told him it was all for the best—

There was a pinging sound as the glass of one pane cracked under his hand and he back away from the house quickly. Then he drifted back down to the lawn, lost in thought until a wet rattle distracted him.

The criminal mastermind Damon had caught earlier was still alive, bleeding out on the grass. Making a quick decision Damon stared him in the eye and ordered, “You never saw me tonight. You don’t want people to bother this house—it’s haunted, it’s dangerous. Look what happened to you when you tried to break in.”

“What hap—“ the young man said foolishly, silenced by Damon shoving him headfirst through a back window, without opening it first. Even in _this_ neighborhood the noise couldn’t be ignored, and Damon lurked in the shadows until he heard the police sirens approaching. Then he went home, plotting.

**

Damon swaggered down the hospital hallway, trying to look like he knew exactly where he was going, and like he wasn’t bothered at all by the pervasive scents of cleaning products and bodily fluids. He’d snacked heavily in the forest before arriving in the hopes that the fresh, live human blood wouldn’t distract him; so far that plan seemed to be working. Except for whenever it wasn’t. Drinking animal blood was like eating cubes of plain tofu, or so he’d heard it compared; he’d never eaten tofu while human. But if it was d—n bland and unsatisfying no matter how much you consumed, it was an apt metaphor. And especially unappealing when the juicy steak you _really_ wanted danced all around you, yours for the taking except for the massive social consequences, if you were the sort to worry about such things…

Damon decided these thoughts were not really helping at all.

At last he found the room he was looking for and walked in, seeing the frail, elderly woman lying in her bed. Tubes sprouted from various uncomfortable-looking places and Damon grimaced involuntarily; humans were such fragile creatures, their lives so easily snuffed out. If it wasn’t violence or accidents incurred by this mechanized age, their own bodies would turn against them—and this was the fate Stefan called noble, that it would be so wrong to deny Elena if she chose. So that someday it could be Elena lying in the hospital bed, with Stefan hovering over her mistaken for a devoted grandson.

Well, not if Damon had anything to say about it.

But he was here for a different purpose, tragic and futile and possibly ridiculous in its own way. Damon sat down in a chair beside the bed and, after an expectant moment, steeled himself to icky humanness and lightly touched the old woman’s rough, bumpy skin. “Mrs. Morris?” he prompted.

Thin bluish eyelids fluttered open and tried to focus. “Billy?” she mumbled hoarsely, then coughed.

Damon wrinkled his nose in distaste, then looked around for some water. He took the ‘nil by mouth’ sign above the bed as an excuse to stop. “Mrs. Morris, do you live alone?” he asked her.

She patted his hand and he forced himself to not jerk it away. “Always got along fine on my own, Billy,” she replied, not really looking at him.

“I’m not Billy,” he corrected, for all the good it would do. “Your house—does anyone else live there?”

“Dave and I wanted to fix the place up, put ramps in, maybe an elevator,” she went on vaguely, “but we never got around to it.”

Damon had known this was not going to be easy and willed himself to have patience. “Who are your friends, Mrs. Morris? Tell me about your friends.”

“Of course I have friends,” she assured him in a slightly vacant tone. “Lucy down at the beauty parlor, and May Dee, we play bridge together…” Damon sighed as she continued to list off names. Wasn’t she supposed to be some lonely old lady that Elena visited out of pity? “…Ellie Cummins, we went to school together, until she was killed in that bus crash…” Damon turned back to her suddenly with a frown, wondering how many of the _other_ people she’d mentioned were actually dead. Although that, in fact, was the criteria he was interested in.

“Is your house haunted?” he tried abruptly.

Just as abruptly Mrs. Morris stopped speaking. Then she smiled. “Don’t forget my little red-haired friend,” she said.

Damon stiffened and stared hard at her. “What’s her name?”

“My red-haired friend keeps me company when everyone else has gone,” the old woman sighed wistfully. “She’s not much of a talker, but she listens well.”

Damon leaned in closer. “What’s her _name_?”

“Claws the furniture something awful, though,” Mrs. Morris added, and Damon slumped back in his chair with a sigh, defeated.

“You mean the _cat_ ,” he surmised with disgust.

Mrs. Morris suddenly clutched his hand tightly. “Have you seen her? Is she alright? She’ll be so lonely without me. She was alone for so long…”

Rolling his eyes at crazy cat ladies Damon pulled out his phone and tried to hold the screen in her eyeline. “She’s fine. See, here she is.” He displayed a photo of the reddish-orange cat lounging majestically on a pile of his clean, white laundry. It was evidence for his grievance list he was planning to present to Stefan.

His enhanced hearing picked up approaching footsteps and he was glad he was already doing something innocent for once as a middle-aged man rounded the corner into the room and stopped abruptly. “Um… Can I help you?” he opened with wary confusion.

Nice people were so dull, Damon judged. He put on his best fake smile and jumped up, holding out his hand. “Hi, I’m Damon Salvatore. You must be Billy, right?”

The man shook his hand sheepishly. “Just Bill, actually,” he corrected. “I haven’t been Billy since I left for college.”

“Moms,” Damon sympathized knowingly. Then, as if just realizing his presence in the hospital room might seem odd, he added, “Oh, my brother and I are looking after your mom’s cat.” He showed the picture again. “She’s made herself right at home.”

“Oh right, of course,” Bill replied. He had clearly given no thought to the animal. “Hey, thanks for that, I really appreciate it. My mom’s really attached to that cat, talks about her all the time like she’s a person. Uh—Mrs. Hawker?”

Damon’s affable façade vanished for a moment as he focused sharply on the man. “What?”

“Or Mrs. Walker? Something like that,” Bill shrugged.

“Mrs. Tubbins,” Damon told him suspiciously.

“Oh, right,” Bill agreed; he obviously didn’t really know. He started to reach for his wallet. “Say, let me give you some money—for looking after the cat—I don’t know when I’ll be able to take it—“

Damon waved him off impatiently. “Forget it. The psychiatrist says it’s good therapy for my brother anyway. He’s a little… Well, anyway.” Damon had always found that trailing off leadingly was a better way to insult Stefan from afar than making up a specific ailment for him. “Say, did you hear her house got broken into last night?” he went on with concern.

Bill was appropriately troubled by this. “Yeah, the police called… I’ve been trying to get her to move for years, come out to Arizona with me, but she really loves that old place. It’s such a bad neighborhood—that’s what the police said and she can’t keep it up very well…” He shrugged, preoccupied.

Damon nodded understandingly. “Look, I hope this isn’t overstepping,” he overstepped, pulling out a business card, “but if it turns out you guys want to sell the house, I might be interested in buying it.”

Bill took the generic, occupation-free card with a perplexed expression. “Why?”

“I’m thinking of restoring it and turning it into a historical B&B,” Damon told him, trying to match the tone of an obnoxious yuppie. Bill blinked at him, not enlightened. “My brother and I have this Edwardian boarding house in town?” he prompted. “It’s kind of a thing.”

“Oh, sure,” Bill agreed finally. “Bed and breakfast. Yeah, those are popular around here.”

“Well anyway,” Damon concluded. “Don’t worry about the cat, just let us know.” He felt that statement was vague yet friendly. “And I’m serious about the house,” he added, heading for the door. “I think it has a lot of potential.”

“Sure, thanks,” Bill told him.

**

Damon stalked through the living room straight to the bourbon bottle, almost missing Stefan lying on the couch. Mrs. Tubbins sat on his chest, purring loudly—Damon had thought it was the dryer at the other end of the house. He glared at them both and both returned his gaze with frighteningly similar impassive stares.

“The Mouseketeer left a dead carcass on the doorstep this morning,” he complained, sloshing some liquid into a glass.

Stefan scratched the cat under her chin. “I know, Mrs. Tubbins is such a good hunter, aren’t you?” he cooed.

Damon stared at him in horror. “Do not ever use that tone again!” he commanded, sincerely regretting his perfect recall for once.

Stefan rolled his eyes. “How did the trip to Mrs. Morris’s house go?” he asked—in a normal tone. Damon had returned late the night before and vanished by the time Stefan got up in the morning.

He could tell from his brother’s expression he wasn’t going to get a straight answer. “Eh,” was all Damon said, knocking back his drink.

“What does _that_ mean?” Stefan pressed. Damon turned and walked off into the next room. “Did you see anything or not?” Stefan called after him.

There was a long pause and Stefan thought he was just going to be ignored. Obviously Damon wasn’t concerned with social niceties such as answering questions, or even saying that he preferred not to talk about it. Then he suddenly stuck his head around the doorway again. “Oh, sorry, were you talking to me?” he asked, in a tone that was not sorry at all. “I’m in the library now.” And he ducked away again.

Sighing, Stefan gently dislodged Mrs. Tubbins from her comfortable resting place and got up. Affronted, the cat skittered away, making Stefan feel guilty; but Damon’s comment was as close as he ever got to inviting Stefan into his life and he didn’t want to discourage that. He walked into the library to find Damon messily searching through some folders of land records Stefan had left out, upending his careful organization and knocking off all the sticky notes.

Stefan waited a moment, then remembered life was better when he had few expectations of his brother. “I heard that someone broke into Mrs. Morris’s house last night,” he began (again).

“Mmm,” Damon non-replied. “Wow, she bought that house in 1987? That was… a really long time ago.” Relatively speaking, of course.

“Yes, she and her husband David moved here from Charlestown,” Stefan informed him. “He died about ten years ago. They seem normal enough, no unusual connections—“

“Ooh, you’ve compiled a _dossier_ on them!” Damon announced gleefully, pronouncing the word in the most obnoxiously French way he could. “You’re like a little FBI. Isn’t Elena helping you fill the time adequately?”

Stefan did not rise to that bait but instead switched back to the original topic. “The man who tried to break into the house was badly injured—they thought he might have slipped and fallen through the window somehow.” His tone indicated how unlikely he found this scenario. “He kept raving about ghosts.”

“Spooky,” Damon said without interest. “Hawkins was just _renting_ the house from the Ballards,” he realized, reaching a much earlier part of Stefan’s research.

Stefan sat down at the table across from him. “Yes. And when they moved back in during that winter, that’s when the ghost stories started,” he explained. He pulled a copied newspaper article from the pile. “In the ‘30’s someone interviewed one of the Ballard daughters about her childhood, for the WPA project. She talks about how the doors would bang, objects moved on their own, and they sometimes caught a glimpse of a ‘ghostly figure.’” Damon snatched the article from him as though he’d been concealing it. “She says they kept it a secret and just sold it to someone else as soon as they could.”

“She was, like, ninety-four,” Damon dismissed after skimming the article. He tossed it away again and hopped up from the table, heading to the shelves of local history books. “Saw Bill Morris at the hospital today,” he added off-hand, which at least gave Stefan a clue about what he’d been up to. “He might stop by sometime. Don’t worry about acting normal, I told him you weren’t right in the head.”

Stefan rolled his eyes. “Why would he stop by?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Damon claimed vaguely. He chucked the book he was flipping through onto an empty shelf and reached for another. Sighing, Stefan started to reorganize the paperwork. “I’m not done with those yet,” Damon warned, so he stopped.

Silence descended. Mrs. Tubbins strode in, her nails tapping on the hardwood floor. She gave a demanding meow and dug her front claws into Stefan’s thigh, vaulting herself up into his lap. He scooted away from the table to give her more room to walk around before settling down. Apparently she had forgiven him for his earlier insult and his reward was the privilege of being used by her again.

The similarities between his brother and the cat were beginning to alarm him.

“I’m thinking of getting a cat or a dog, once Mrs. Tubbins leaves,” Stefan announced. Damon gave him a put-upon glare, as if he’d suffered through this enough. “Just _one_ ,” Stefan insisted, a bit defensively.

“Oh, it always _starts_ with one,” Damon said knowingly, moving on to a new section—auction catalogs, apparently. “Then you’ll be saying, ‘It’s lonely’ or ‘The neighbors want to drown this one’ or ‘It followed me home,’ and the next thing you know, the Salvatore Boarding House becomes the Salvatore Animal Shelter.”

“Could you make some _small_ effort to not destroy things?” Stefan asked as several of the books Damon had haphazardly stacked tumbled to the floor. Mrs. Tubbins froze tensely on his lap at the noise and he stroked her head soothingly.

“Although,” Damon went on blithely, “people _do_ like it when their hotel includes breakfast.” He gazed meaningfully at the cat.

“You’re not even making sense,” Stefan chose to claim.

“Anyway, I need Elena to go back to that house,” Damon said suddenly, as though they’d been discussing this all along.

“What? Why?”

“Because _she_ can get in, and _we_ can’t,” Damon replied, as though it should be obvious. He slapped an auction catalog down on the table in front of Stefan, causing a startled Mrs. Tubbins to spring to the floor and sprint away. “G-d, cats,” he summed up derisively. “I need her to go to the attic and look for a trunk like this.”

Stefan examined the photo of a familiar large leather storage trunk, which had been auctioned in Marysville several years ago along with other pre-War artifacts, some of which had ended up in the Salvatore house. “Did you see a trunk like this in Mrs. Morris’s house?” Stefan questioned, just to be sure.

Damon indicated yes. “In the attic. With the initials FEB on it.”

Stefan’s eyebrows went up and he nodded slowly. “I suppose, as the place changed hands, things could get left in the attic by previous occupants, and never cleared out…” But then he suddenly took on a resistant posture. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to send Elena in there,” he hedged. “I mean, she’d be breaking into someone’s house and digging through their things—“

Damon made a noise of impatience. “ _You’re_ the one who put me on to this!” he pointed out indignantly. “All your ‘make peace with Frances’ nonsense. If Elena opens the trunk and it really belonged to Frances—I’m prepared to buy the house, so I can get in and see for myself.”

Stefan’s eyes widened. “You would _buy_ the house?”

“Sure, what’s it worth at this point, five bucks and change?” Damon scoffed as though it were no big deal. He had a slightly faraway look in his eye, though, which told Stefan this meant more to him than he was letting on.

“Is Mrs. Morris… not going to be needing the house anymore?” he asked instead.

Damon shrugged. “I don’t know. I can always compel her or her son to sell, if it’s worth it.” Stefan was not really fond of that idea. “But I want to know what’s in that trunk before I take on that heap. Anyway, she doesn’t have to _break_ in,” he added, referring to Elena. “We’ll borrow the key from someone. Say she’s looking for the cat’s favorite sweater or whatever.”

After a moment Stefan realized Damon actually made sense—always a disturbing discovery—and nodded his agreement. It had been _his_ idea to get Damon involved in this, and really this was the next logical step. If he could get Elena to help them, of course.

**

“Okay, what _exactly_ am I looking for?” Elena checked again as they waited outside Mrs. Morris’s house that afternoon. “And what should I do when I find it?”

Stefan hid a smile, worried she would feel made fun of; but he appreciated that she took this so seriously. “Up in the attic there’s a large, black trunk with initials on it,” he described, and she nodded, having seen the picture in the auction catalog. “It must be somewhat close to the back window. All you have to do is open it and look inside. There might be some letters or something with a name on it to indicate who it belonged to.”

“Okay, that sounds easy enough,” Elena agreed. She didn’t know why she was nervous; she’d been in the house plenty of times before… though always with Mrs. Morris, except for the last time. Maybe it was because there was supposed to be a ghost inside, she thought dryly—and, more seriously, because neither Stefan nor Damon could enter to help her, if anything happened. Elena still didn’t know how she felt about this whole ghost thing, but the boys seemed to be taking the history, at least, seriously. Maybe they just wanted to put that personal mystery to rest, without expecting some kind of supernatural angle. Stefan had been uncharacteristically vague on the subject.

Damon drove up in his car, wasting no time flinging the key to Stefan. “Here, got it from Bill Morris,” he announced. “Apparently cats don’t wear sweaters? So I just compelled him.”

“Great, good start,” Stefan replied flatly.

Damon ignored the rebuke and turned to Elena. “Okay, Cinnamon, your mission, should you choose to accept it—“

“Wait. Cinnamon?” Elena asked in confusion.

“From the old _Mission: Impossible_ TV show,” Stefan explained.

“Oh.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Damon cut in impatiently, “go up to the attic, open the trunk. Take pictures of what you find and send them to us.”

“But don’t actually take anything from the house,” Stefan cautioned. “We’re not thieves.” He directed this pointed remark at Damon.

“Right. Stealing stuff upsets the ghost,” Damon claimed. There was a pause. “Well?” he prompted.

Elena took the key from Stefan. “Okay. Here I go.”

“You’ll be fine,” he assured her, walking up the sagging porch steps with her. Somehow, this made her feel even _more_ nervous and she quickly unlocked the front door and stepped into the gloomy interior.

The air was musty and stale, and slightly sour from the spilled milk. Bill Morris had been staying in a motel near the hospital; likely no one had been in here since they took Mrs. Morris away, except Elena and the police when they pulled that guy out of the window. She saw where that window had been boarded up and tried not to think about the man’s claim that a _ghost_ had attacked him. It was far more likely to have been a vampire.

And what kind of world was she living in when _that_ gave her comfort.

Elena tried to march purposefully up the stairs to the second floor. The house was old; there were creaks and drafts. Big deal. They were basically just random, or caused by Elena’s own movements.

Except for the ones that weren’t.

She froze on the steps, adding no new pressure to the old wood. The air hung silently around her. Elena had an incredibly strong feeling that she was being watched, that if she looked up or back down the stairs she would see someone standing there, waiting for her. But of course when she _did_ look—there was no one.

 _Stop being foolish_ , she told herself angrily, and she continued up the stairs.

There was a cord hanging from the ceiling in the second-floor hallway, which pulled down the stairs to the attic behind a wooden panel. Elena had used it before—she’d even been in the attic before—when helping Mrs. Morris get down some Christmas decorations. At the time Elena had suggested storing the decorations in one of the extra bedrooms instead, so it would be easier for the older woman to get to them; but Mrs. Morris had insisted all three bedrooms were in use. Elena hadn’t thought she got many visitors aside from her son on occasion, but—eccentric.

Elena reached up and gave the cord a tug, stepping back as the stairs unfolded in slow motion, like a huge caterpillar straightening itself out. And dropping dust bunnies and bits of insulation down—clearly no one had been up in the attic for a while.

Once the stairs were firmly grounded on the floor Elena started to climb them. A chill breeze suddenly raced up her back, fluttering her hair. Air displacement from opening up the attic, she told herself. Or whatever.

The air was thick with dust and Elena stopped herself from sneezing, knowing that would only stir up more. She fumbled for the light switch on the wall, an old-fashioned round one, and the light bulbs wavered to life with an audible hum. Sunlight still entered through the small windows, but it was at the wrong angle for the best illumination and would be fading soon anyway. Why hadn’t she thought to bring a flashlight, she wondered, as one of the bulbs overhead dimmed suddenly. Quickly she pulled out her cell phone, trying to use the light from its display to help her see better.

After a moment her eyes adjusted and she saw a large object near the back windows, which appeared to be the trunk. There were various boxes and bags and bits of furniture to trip her as she made her way over to it, their outlines strobing in and out as the display on her phone kept darkening to save energy. Another slight breeze on her right made Elena jump; she could have sworn someone had just walked past her, and the outline of a chair covered with a sheet, seen from the corner of her eye, momentarily stopped her cold. As she relaxed and chided herself for her imaginativeness, the sheet fluttered and a small dust devil kicked up from the floor nearby.

Like someone had just walked past it.

Someone in a full skirt that swept the ground.

 _Or like air currents_ , Elena insisted to herself. She just needed to get this over with and get back outside, to Stefan and sunlight and the supernatural forces she _knew_ about.

Quickly Elena knelt down before the trunk, trying to focus on mundane things like how filthy she’d be when she finally left here. She tried to lift the trunk’s lid but it wouldn’t budge. Then she realized there was some sort of metal clasp in the center. It was cold to the touch, almost icy, and it was stuck tight. Looking around Elena grabbed an old wooden hanger and tried to pry the clasp open, without damaging it, but she only dented the wood. Maybe there was some kind of lock she wasn’t seeing?

She sat back on her heels for a moment, then stole a glance around nervously. Of course, she saw no one. Maybe she was just feeling guilty for trying to break into this trunk that didn’t belong to her—she would’ve preferred to ask Mrs. Morris straight out if they could do it, but Damon said she was ‘loopy’ and her son wouldn’t understand.

Elena tried one more time with the hanger, then tossed it aside. _Oh well_ , she thought, relief flooding through her as she stood. _I tried_. Now she could get out of this increasingly creepy place and—

Behind her, from the direction of the trunk, there was a click.

For a moment Elena thought to ignore it, then she slowly turned around. The latch on the trunk stood open.

She wanted to walk away anyway. She wanted to _run_ away. No matter how much she told herself that the latch had just been stuck and had worked itself loose while she was pulling on it—deep down, she couldn’t make herself believe it.

 _Don’t be a wuss_ , Elena told herself, and she walked back to the trunk. Not a breath of air stirred as she knelt down in front of it again. For one horrible instant the thought raced into her mind— _what would she see when she lifted the lid?_ But she took a breath, and lifted it.

Clothes, books, smaller boxes met her gaze and she let her breath out shakily, trying not to stir up more dust. Nothing to worry about. Quickly she opened a few of the books, but they were just printed novels, not diaries, and they had no name inscribed. Then she saw something wooden and rectangular, and she realized it was a picture frame turned facedown. She picked it up and turned it over curiously.

Damon glared back at her from the photo. His hair was a bit longer and he wore an old-fashioned suit, and his face had the slightly grim, dyspeptic expression of so many old photographs, taken at a time when pictures required solemnity. Intellectually she knew, of course, how old he and Stefan were—that was the entire premise of this adventure—but seeing the proof of it always took her aback.

But Damon wasn’t alone in the fading sepia photo. There was a woman standing beside him, her hand resting on his shoulder as he sat in a chair. She was plumper than Elena had expected—for a woman associated with Damon—and the heavy fashion of the time did her no favors. But she had a pleasant face, gentle, almost smiling despite the stern expectations of the setting—like she was so happy she couldn’t keep it locked inside, no matter how undignified it might be.

Elena abruptly realized she’d been staring at the photo for a long time and she hurriedly put it down and lifted her cell phone. She snapped a photo and sent it to both Stefan and Damon, then called Stefan.

“ _Did you get it?_ ” Elena asked eagerly.

Stefan, who a moment earlier had been on the point of calling Elena to check on her, now struggled to respond. “Yes,” he finally said, and pulled the phone away to stare at the picture again.

“ _Is it her?_ ” Elena pressed. “ _Is it Frances?_ ”

“Yes,” Stefan repeated, walking around Damon to stare at the copy on _his_ phone. His brother was dangerously silent. “It’s Frances. That’s how I remember her. Damon?” he prompted nervously.

“It’s our engagement picture,” he revealed, which Stefan already knew. Their father had generously allowed Stefan to keep it in his bedroom, rather than display it in the parlor for all to see. “Right after that I—“

Elena screamed.

They could hear it over the phone and through the thin walls of the house and Stefan immediately rushed to the front door. “Elena!” he shouted inside from his position trapped on the threshold.

Damon zipped around the back of the house and shot upward as thumps and bangs echoed through the house. He stopped at the attic window, trying to see in, and for an instant he thought he saw, quite clearly, Frances standing in a green dress near the trunk, her face awash with emotion. Then something toppled over in front of the window, blocking his view.

He heard footsteps below and caught a glimpse of Elena running down the stairs through the second-floor window, so he lowered himself to the ground and raced back around to the front. The neighbors didn’t seem the type to look out their own windows much, fortunately.

“Elena!” Stefan called again, then stepped back as he finally saw her. She came flying out the door and threw her arms around him.

“What happened?” Damon wanted to know. “Was someone else in there?”

“I don’t—No, I think—“ Elena tried to catch her breath as Stefan rubbed her back soothingly, and Damon rolled his eyes.

“If someone saw you in there we should catch them,” he pointed out impatiently.

“Are you okay?” Stefan asked her instead. “Why did you scream?”

Elena pulled back slightly, a sheepish expression on her face. “I’m okay,” she assured them. “I don’t think there was anyone else there. Really,” she admitted. “It was just—really creepy, and the latch opened on its own, and it was like someone was watching me, and then something fell over… I think I just scared myself,” she sighed.

Stefan hugged her gently. “It’s okay. Thank you for going in, you found exactly what we were looking for. Now we know that trunk belonged to Frances.”

The front door suddenly slammed, just inches behind them, and they all jumped. “Maybe we should go,” Stefan suggested tactfully. He took the key back from Elena and tried the door. “It’s locked already,” he noted curiously.

“Maybe it’s just—stuck,” Elena suggested.

He tried the key in it. “No, it’s locked. Maybe Mrs. Morris had one of those automatic locks—“

“I don’t think she did,” Damon said, his tone flat. He stared at the house with the same intensity he’d turned on the photograph.

Stefan and Elena shared a glance. “Come on, let’s go,” he repeated, leading them off the porch. Damon kept turning back to look at the house, his eyes flickering to every window.

“I’ll take the key back,” he said suddenly, holding out his hand for it without looking at Stefan.

Stefan hesitated. “Are you going to offer to buy the house from him?”

When the key failed to land in his palm Damon turned a glare on his brother. “ _Yes_ , like I _said_ ,” he replied sharply.

“You really think—Frances is in there?” Elena checked hesitantly.

“No, I just want a vacation home from you two,” Damon sneered, snatching the key from Stefan. He threw himself into his car and roared away, leaving Stefan and Elena staring after him.

**

Later that evening Damon came home, slouching past Stefan and Elena in the living room in an obvious way as he headed to the stairs. When they didn’t immediately ask him what he’d been up to he announced, “I’m using your printer!” and detoured towards Stefan’s room.

That got his brother’s attention. “No, you’re not,” Stefan countered, appearing in the doorway of his own room to find Damon messing with his computer. “Use your own.”

“Mine doesn’t _work_ ,” Damon whined pathetically. “It’s all _dry_.”

“Use your own computer, at least,” Stefan insisted, physically blocking the machine. Damon was not very careful with other people’s things (that really went without saying) and last time he’d used his computer, Stefan had found some very… exotic pictures downloaded to it, which he hoped were meant as a joke and not an indication of his brother’s taste.

“I need to find a house-selling contract that I can use,” Damon replied indignantly.

“You talked to Bill Morris? He agreed to sell?” Stefan asked, not moving away from the computer. “Is it really his house to sell?”

“Yes, he has power of attorney and he’s taking his mom back to Arizona with him,” Damon reported. He gave up on Stefan’s computer finally and went to use his own, Stefan trailing behind him.

“It’s only been a couple days since her stroke,” he pointed out. “How do the doctors know what her prognosis is already?” Damon gave him a sideways glance from where he sat Googling at his own computer. “You just compelled him,” Stefan concluded. The disapproval was obvious in his tone and Damon rolled his eyes.

“It’s what he really wants to do anyway,” Damon claimed. “I’m just speeding up the timeline. Taking the issue off his hands,” he added nobly. “One less thing for him to—Cat!” he interrupted himself, pointing accusingly at Mrs. Tubbins who had trotted into his bedroom.

“Does that work?” Elena asked curiously, pausing in the doorway. “Compelling someone to sell you their house so you can enter it? That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Cat cat cat cat!” Damon repeated in agitation, his finger trailing Mrs. Tubbins around his room.

Stefan sighed and went to collect the offending creature. “It seems to work if done in good faith,” he explained to Elena. “If he really wants to sell, and Damon really pays him a fair price.”

“Cat hair,” Damon pointed out, aiming at a strand on his floor.

Stefan ignored this, carrying Mrs. Tubbins back to the doorway. “It doesn’t seem to work for outright scams, though,” he added.

“So now you can go into the house?” Elena questioned.

“Not until it’s signed and paid for,” Damon corrected. He clicked his mouse a few times. “There, I _emailed_ you the contract. Can you _please_ print it?” His tone suggested that even having to ask was ridiculous.

“How much did you agree to pay?” Stefan wanted to know.

“Mmm… Hundred grand.”

Stefan blinked at him. “Sorry, I thought you said a hundred grand.”

Damon swiveled around in his chair to look up at him. “You’ve got mail,” he pointed out obnoxiously. “I’ll just check it for you, I know your password,” he added, hopping up from his chair. “Love those pics you sent him last week,” he told Elena suggestively. “Red is definitely your color.”

“It was a winter coat I was trying on, jacka-s,” Elena realized as he slid out the door.

“Maybe you’d like to go back to the TV?” Stefan suggested delicately, watching Damon disappear into _his_ room.

“Shut my door!” Damon called. “I don’t want any _cat_ in there!”

“Mrs. Tubbins and I are going to watch TV,” Elena decided, taking the cat from Stefan. The creature immediately leaped from her arms and ran off.

He smiled and kissed her cheek. “I’ll just be a minute,” he promised.

“Which of these buttons should I press?” Damon wanted to know, dangerously. “All of them?”

Stefan hurried to attend him. “A hundred thousand dollars is easily twice what that property’s worth,” he commented, opening and printing the document Damon had sent.

“Location, location, ghost,” Damon reminded him. “Plus I get to keep some random leftover historical artifacts. You know, to make the bed & breakfast seem more authentic.” Stefan shook his head at what seemed to him an unlikely cover story—they hadn’t hosted paying guests at the boarding house since Stefan had returned to town. Damon snatched the pages from the printer and glanced over them. “Okay, I might make some changes and print it again,” he decided blithely. Stefan started to protest. “I can always do it myself,” Damon offered innocently.

“No, no, please come get me, I’ll do it,” Stefan sighed without enthusiasm. As soon as Damon sauntered away he set about changing his password.

In his own room Damon scrutinized the documents and started annotating the file, to make sure he got to keep what he wanted while getting rid of as much other stuff as possible. Sure, there would probably be a time lag before he could really start making improvements to the house—Bill Morris wasn’t going to have his mom’s twenty-five-years’ worth of accumulated junk cleared out in a weekend, after all—but once the transaction was complete Damon would be able to enter the house as its owner. Hopefully that would be tomorrow. In the morning. Then he would figure out what was _really_ going on.

His cell phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out to see that he had a text message from Elena. Which was a little weird, considering she was just downstairs—and that the message was just a single word, his own name. He frowned down at it, then in an instant zipped out to the hall and leaned over the railing to see into the living room. Stefan and Elena were sitting on the couch watching TV with the cat on their laps, the nauseating picture of domestic bliss. The two heartbeats in the room were normal, no signs of upset. Damon went back to his room, rolling his eyes.

A few minutes later his phone buzzed again. _Damon_ , it read, from Elena. Okay, this was now getting annoying, he decided. Stefan and Elena usually came up with more subtle ways to irritate him, like finishing each other’s sentences, being right about something, or cleaning his room. Random, pointless texts showed a distinct lack of imagination.

His phone buzzed a third time. _Damon_ , Elena had texted.

He stomped down the stairs. “Why are you texting me?” he demanded peevishly. “Stop it, it’s juvenile.”

“You’re one to call something _juvenile_ ,” Elena scoffed. She turned back to the TV.

“Wait, who’s texting you?” Stefan asked in confusion.

“Elena,” Damon huffed, showing him his phone. “Stop messing with me, I am productively engaged for once.”

“Are _you_ messing with _me_?” Stefan checked cautiously. Damon’s schemes could be rather elaborate sometimes.

“No!” he insisted.

“Elena hasn’t been texting you,” Stefan assured him. “We’ve just been sitting here watching TV.”

“Well, you sent them earlier,” Damon decided, unwilling to let go of his annoyance, “and they’re just now reaching me.”

“So she should go back in the past and stop texting you?” Stefan asked dryly.

“I didn’t text you at _all_ ,” Elena told Damon, taking the phone from him to see for herself. She would not have put it past him to be playing a stupid joke, perhaps designed to trick her into looking at _inappropriate_ pictures on his phone. But the texts seemed innocent enough. “It’s just your name over and over,” she observed.

“Brilliant deduction,” he noted snidely.

The phone buzzed in her hand, breaking off her glare at him. It _was_ a little creepy to see her name as the incoming caller when she knew she wasn’t, though. “It’s probably just an error,” Stefan decided, taking the phone from her. “Repeating the same message sent months ago—“ He stopped when he saw the new message.

“What?” Damon prompted. Stefan held up the phone for them both to see. The caller ID was still Elena, but the message now read _Damon Francesco Salvatore_.

“I have definitely never sent that as a message,” Elena stated slowly.

“Where’s your phone?” Stefan asked urgently.

She patted down her pockets and couldn’t find it, emptied out her purse, checked her coat and backpack—but the phone was nowhere to be found. “This is so stupid,” Damon muttered, dialing Elena’s number and zipping around the house. “Spend my evening searching for a lost phone—I don’t hear it in the house,” he announced, returning to the living room. “You didn’t answer, by the way.”

“It’s not in the car,” Stefan confirmed. “You had it at Mrs. Morris’s house when you took the picture,” he reminded her. “Maybe you left it at the Grill when we had dinner?”

“If this is Bonnie or Caroline’s idea of a clever prank, you need a better caliber of friend,” Damon judged.

Elena’s expression was uncertain, though. “I don’t remember having it at the Grill…”

“Try the GPS locator,” Stefan suggested and Damon brought the signal’s place of origin up on Google Maps.

They both stared at it silently.

“It’s Mrs. Morris’s house, isn’t it?” Elena guessed, her throat suddenly dry. Her fingers reached out to curl around Stefan’s. “I must’ve dropped it…”

Damon dialed the number again; the call was answered this time. “Who is this?” he snapped into the phone. “Why are you calling me?” There was no answer except for a series of thumps, then the call was disconnected. Damon glanced at Stefan in questioning bemusement.

Stefan tried to take a pragmatic view. “It could be someone in the house, who saw us there and found Elena’s phone,” he suggested, “and now they’re just messing with us. As a prank, or preparatory to blackmail.”

Damon did not find this likely. “That’s a dumb plan,” he judged.

Elena tried to think rationally as well, though the phantom phone calls turned her stomach to ice. “Is it… reasonable that a ghost can use a cell phone?” she asked, her voice weaker than she’d intended.

Stefan slid his arm around her. “I’m not really sure,” he admitted.

Damon’s phone buzzed again and he showed Stefan the message: _18 Jun 1839_. “What’s that?” Elena asked.

“My birthday,” Damon told her.

He started to text this back but Stefan stopped him. “Don’t put ‘my,’” he suggested. “Someone might be trying to trick us, confirm we’re vampires.”

“And you say _I’m_ paranoid,” Damon muttered, but he sent back only the word _birthday_. “I’ll see if they recognize Frances’s birthday,” he added, but glanced at Stefan before typing.

“Pick a different day,” he countered. “Something they can’t get from a public record, that Frances would know.”

Damon nodded slowly, thought a moment, then typed _17 May 1863_. A long couple of minutes passed silently; when the phone buzzed again Elena jumped, then felt foolish. “What do they say?” she asked, unaware of the date’s significance herself.

Damon showed them the message. _Engage_ , it read. “The day you and Frances got engaged?” Stefan confirmed. Damon nodded pensively.

“So… it _is_ Frances, then?” Elena pressed. After vampires and witches she didn’t see why she should find this so difficult to accept.

“Or a Captain Picard fan,” Damon cracked, breaking the tension in the room.

Stefan rolled his eyes. “There could have been a date on the photograph,” he pointed out, “or she might have mentioned it in a letter or diary. Or it could be a flat-out guess.”

“Your suspicion makes me suspicious,” Damon accused, with narrowed eyes. “It’s the ghost of my allegedly murdered ex-fiancée. What could there possibly be to question?” Elena hoped he was kidding.

“I just don’t want you to walk into a trap,” Stefan shrugged, trying to sound nonchalant. “Like what happened with your allegedly murdered vampire ex-girlfriend.”

“G-d, _women_ ,” Damon complained. “Always getting murdered and not staying that way.” He started to walk away.

“Where are you going?” Stefan called after him.

“Where do you think?” Damon shot back, without stopping.

“To stand on the lawn, staring into the house all night until you can get Bill Morris to sign that contract,” Stefan predicted, and for a moment Damon’s expression was almost comically surprised.

“Well… yeah,” he sputtered.

“I’ll go with you,” Stefan offered. Elena did _not_ like the thought of being alone tonight.

“No,” Damon countered instinctively.

“I want to see Frances, too.”

“You’ll only confuse her,” Damon claimed, though clearly he was just now putting this argument together. “I have to explain to her why I’m still alive—er, in existence—it must be really weird for her.” The excuse came out in the wrong tone, evidence his muscle for consideration of others had atrophied.

“And how would _I_ make that more difficult?” Stefan pressed reasonably.

“It’ll be two against one,” Damon pointed out nonsensically.

“Which is good if it’s not really Frances,” Stefan noted. “Or if she’s been driven to a homicidal rage over the last century and a half, with unknown supernatural powers.” Elena did not like to think about that, not with all the times she’d been in that house.

Damon looked at him for a long moment. “Maybe I’ll wait ‘til morning,” he decided.

“Oh, okay,” Stefan replied, sounding slightly disappointed. “Do you want me to come with you then?”

Damon seemed to be giving the ‘homicidal rage’ part further contemplation. “You can come over later,” he decided. He brightened. “You can pack and clean!” The word ‘help’ was noticeably absent.

“You really don’t want to go over tonight?” Stefan checked.

“I’m busy,” Damon decided. “I have to finish the contract. I’m going to use your printer now.” He zipped upstairs.

Stefan settled back down on the couch with Elena, giving her a conspiratorial smile. He might find some inappropriate pictures on his computer later; but at least he’d convinced Damon to wait until daylight before confronting… whatever was in that house.

**

At sunrise Damon was thumping on Bill Morris’s motel room door. Then he was doing it again at 8:45, because apparently no notary in any town within twenty-five miles of Mystic Falls showed up to work before 9, which was just lazy. By 9:05 the contract was signed and witnessed, and Bill was holding a check for one hundred thousand dollars with a slightly dazed expression on his face. There was, apparently, other paperwork that needed to be completed and filed, which Damon decided to delegate to Stefan later; the rule of house protection was an ancient one and not dependent on taxes, fees, or land records, in his estimation. It wasn’t dependent on power of attorney, either, but Damon was confident the family tie would count.

If not, he had back-up plans, which Stefan would like even less.

Damon still wasn’t sure if he believed this ghost story, though. Ghosts in general he could accept; but was there a ghost in this particular case, and was it really Frances? He didn’t marvel at the odds, because this was Mystic Falls and weird stuff just seemed to go down here, for whatever reason. But he also wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was all an elaborate conspiracy put on by other spiteful supernatural creatures, or humans with too much free time. So when he walked up the sagging steps of the old farmhouse he tried to prepare himself for anything—not an easy task when he mostly got by through being _unprepared_.

Damon unlocked the door and pushed it open. The interior was dim and smelled heavily of cat, sour milk, medicinal lotions, fabrics that hadn’t tasted fresh air in thirty years. _Home sweet home_ , he thought, and crossed the threshold.

Everything was quiet. Well, as quiet as an old house could be to vampire hearing. But no _unusual_ sounds.

Damon thought he felt something, though. Like sensing someone was near you, standing silently in your blind spot. Slowly he turned a full circle in the living room, almost surprised when he _didn’t_ see anyone. He came back around to the direction he’d originally been facing, ready to explore the rest of the house—

 _Who are you_ , said the Scrabble tiles inexplicably laid out on a card table.

He knew the words had not been there when he walked in.

“I’m Damon Salvatore,” he answered aloud, examining the area above and below the card table for tile-moving mechanisms.

The message hadn’t changed when he looked at the table again and he frowned impatiently. Then he detected a certain pungent smell in the air and followed it to the laundry room, where a whiteboard was propped atop the dryer. A green marker lay in its tray and the message on the board read simply, _He’s dead_.

“You’re one to talk,” Damon scoffed. “Who are _you_?”

The marker did not move, so Damon went back to the living room. _Frances Briggs Hawkins_ , said the Scrabble tiles.

“Sorry, she’s dead,” he shot back. He zipped to the laundry room, noted the previous message was still on the whiteboard, then zipped back to the card table, which hadn’t changed either. A tapping sound drew him into the kitchen but stopped when he arrived, leaving him staring at the magnet letters on the refrigerator.

 _It’s complicated_ , they read.

“This form of communication is stupid,” Damon judged. The magnet letters didn’t move, so he went back to the living room.

 _Sorry_ , said the Scrabble tiles. Another tap came from the laundry room. _All I can do_ , read the whiteboard.

“What am I supposed to do, just wander all over the house all day?” he complained. “Let’s pick one method and stick with it. The whiteboard seems the most versatile.” He leaned against the opposite wall in the laundry room, waiting.

There was a tapping in the living room. “No, I do not respond to taps, I’m not a beer keg,” he declared stubbornly. “If you have to write, do it here.”

The tapping from the living room became more insistent. “Nope,” Damon denied.

There was a thump like a piece of furniture falling over, but he didn’t take his eyes off the whiteboard. “I can wait here for a really long time,” he warned.

Silence descended on the house. Damon stared at the whiteboard and tried to think of ways the messages could be left through technological trickery. Or maybe a particularly fast-moving vampire, or a witch’s spell—

His phone buzzed and he pulled it into his eyeline. There was a text message from “Elena,” which he decided to read. _Hard to do_ , it said. _Must concentrate. Don’t watch._

“Well _that’s_ convenient, isn’t it?” Damon sneered. “You’re asking me to accept that you’re, what, a _ghost_ of someone who should’ve died a hundred years ago, and you can move objects _and_ use a cell phone, but only when I’m not looking. Is Ashton Kutcher going to jump out with a video camera soon?”

The tapping repeated in the living room. “Fine,” Damon sighed heavily, returning there. A chair lay on its side. “I’m not picking that up,” he announced. The Scrabble tiles were all scrambled, so he went on to the kitchen.

 _Joke is so 2006_ , the magnets read, and his lips twitched slightly. Okay, so the comedic timing wasn’t great, but Frances _had_ had a biting sense of humor.

“I suppose you’ve kept up with pop culture,” he surmised skeptically.

The TV snapped on in the living room and when Damon walked back in there, the channels changed rapidly. “Yawn,” he derided. “They were doing that trick on ‘80’s detective shows.”

 _Damon is dead_ , the Scrabble tiles read when he turned away from the TV. He supposed this person had a point, if they were legitimately a ghost, Frances’s ghost—the situation must seem extremely suspicious to her as well.

“Technically true,” he said, then added recklessly, “I’m a vampire.”

There was silence. If anyone was going to jump out with wooden stakes and vervain darts, surely now would be the time.

“Well?” he prompted after a long moment of nothing. A marker squeaked and he zipped into the laundry room.

 _Not real_ , said the whiteboard.

“Did you not notice how fast I just moved?” Damon insisted. “Didn’t you see me the other night?” He had _flown_. And was chomping down on someone.

He walked back into the living room. _Confused_ , read the Scrabble tiles.

“You’re not the only one,” he sighed, turning off the blaring TV. Mrs. Morris probably kept it turned up extra loud.

Damon knew the circuit now and went into the kitchen. _When_ , said the magnets on the fridge.

“Eighteen sixty-four,” he replied automatically.

A noise from the living room drew him back with some alarm. Couch pillows flew wildly around the room and furniture tipped over as he watched in amazement. “Frances—“ he tried tentatively.

 _Wrong_ , the Scrabble tiles screamed at him. The living room settled but there was a sharp crack from the laundry room and Damon found the whiteboard on the floor, facedown. When he turned it over he saw that it read _1863_ , with the ‘3’ underlined several times.

“What?” he protested, righting the board. “I don’t understand.” Doors slammed upstairs. “You! Hey! Get back here!” he called in irritation.

Muffled thumps came from the upper floors and he imagined the attic furniture being knocked around. Frances hadn’t been the violent temper sort back when she was alive… then again, the idea of killing someone to drink their blood, and discarding them afterwards like a used juice box, would have been foreign to him at one point.

“I’m going for a walk!” he called to the air as the house quieted. “But I’ll be back!” There was no response.

**

Damon could feel suspicious eyes on him through the blinds in the windows of the surrounding houses as he sauntered back down the sidewalk, plastic grocery bags dangling from his fingers. People just better get used to seeing him around here, he decided dismissively, because he wasn’t going away. Not until he’d figured out what was going on with this rickety old house.

He hopped back up the steps, skipping the sagging ones, and unlocked the door. He swung it open cautiously, then froze in the doorway, staring at the utter chaos inside. Most pieces of furniture he could see had been turned upside-down, books and picture frames and lamps were strewn across the floor, and the message _Go away!_ had been scrawled across the wall in red.

Damon’s temper flared and he slammed the door shut behind him, the hinges groaning at the force. “Nice,” he snapped sarcastically to the empty air. “That’s really mature of you. I’m sure that just terrifies the tourists.” He’d just bought a bunch of cleaning supplies, at least, though he’d planned to assign Stefan the actual cleaning. Still muttering under his breath he snapped a picture of the room and sent it to his brother. A moment later, as he was realizing the red matter on the wall was some kind of old lady lipstick, Stefan called.

“ _So, the reconciliation is going well_ ,” he surmised dryly.

“Bats—t insane,” Damon judged harshly, righting the couch only so he could flop down on it. “It was going okay—she only communicates by writing or moving Scrabble tiles around, which is STUPID, by the way,” he added loudly, “then we had a little mix-up with dates and she flipped out.”

“ _You think it’s really Frances, though?_ ” Stefan checked. The sounds of students changing classes pattered behind him.

“I don’t know,” Damon sighed. “I did the vampire reveal and nothing happened. Then I come back to these _cheap tricks I’m not cleaning up_ ,” he reiterated, in case anyone else in the house was listening.

“ _Did you find Elena’s phone?_ ” Stefan asked.

“The Specter still has it,” Damon informed him. “She can text, too. Convenient, huh? Hey, when you call Elena, does your photo appear on the screen?”

“ _I think so_.”

“That’s so nauseating,” Damon judged. Then, more on point, “Call her number. I want Casparina to see you.”

“ _Okay_ ,” Stefan agreed, “ _but I have to go to class now_.”

“Whatever,” Damon replied, hanging up. A moment later his keen hearing picked up a ringtone far above him, probably in the attic. It was a tinny version of “More Than a Feeling,” which promptly got the song stuck in his head as it went on for several seconds. Finally it stopped. He waited a moment, but heard nothing else.

“Did you see the picture?” he finally said aloud. “That’s Stefan. You remember Stefan.” He phrased the last part as a challenge.

There was a cold sensation near him, not so much like a draft, more like walking into a cool room on a hot day, and Damon turned slowly to stare over the back of the couch, at the foot of the stairs. There was nothing there.

Not really.

And yet, he thought there was.

He heard a faint squeak from the laundry room and, sighing dramatically, hauled himself off the couch and walked in. The whiteboard was still on the floor where he’d left it. _How Stefan now?_

“How now, brown cow?” he mocked. “Frances was always very articulate, kind of a grammar Nazi, actually.”

Tap tap tap in the living room. The Scrabble tiles, now scattered across the floor, had been rearranged to read, _Difficult now_. Tap tap tap in the kitchen. _Told before_ , said the magnets on the fridge.

Damon rolled his eyes. “What a whiner. Frances wasn’t a whiner.”

Tap tap tap in the laundry room. The previous message had been circled.

“Stefan’s a vampire, too,” he explained briefly. “Since 1864. Do not freak out on me, I know when it happened,” he asserted.

 _Convenient_ , said the Scrabble tiles accusingly.

“Yeah, well…” Damon had no intention of getting into the whole sordid story to… whoever. Right now, anyway. “We always did everything together,” he added, aiming for sarcasm but hitting more in the bitterness range.

 _True_ , agreed the magnet letters thoughtfully.

“So…” Damon said after a moment of silence. “When did you get into this whole ‘ghost’ business, anyway?”

 _2 Aug 1863_ , read the whiteboard.

The date held no significance for him. “Huh. Okay.” He tried to think back to his own activities around that time, but his human memories were weak and hazy. It was about ten weeks after he’d gotten engaged to Frances, about two months after he’d joined the Army and been deployed. “I was probably in… hmm, Tennessee at the time. Yeah… maybe. In the field somewhere.”

 _With the Army_ , read the Scrabble tiles. They had no punctuation, so it was difficult to tell what inflection was meant.

“Yes, with the Army,” Damon repeated. “I was a sharpshooter in the 23rd Virginia Infantry.” Silence met this remark, with no new messages. “I get the feeling you don’t believe me about this part,” he announced dryly. “But that’s okay, because I don’t believe you either.” What, exactly, he didn’t believe he couldn’t say; but the whole situation had so many unanswered questions he didn’t even know where to begin.

 _Mrs. Morris?_ questioned the fridge magnets, wearily changing the subject.

“Stroke. Hospital,” Damon reported succinctly. “Going back to Arizona to live with her son.”

 _Billy_ , said the Scrabble tiles.

“He prefers _Bill_ , actually,” Damon replied obnoxiously. “He sold the house to me, so—“

Something dropped to the floor in the other room, but Damon refused to go see what it was. “That’s right, you’re stuck with me,” he pointed out. “And since both of us seem to be more or less immortal, it’s gonna be for a long time. So you _better_ stop making messes.”

Slowly, as with great concentration, a book floated off the floor and was slipped onto a bookshelf.

“Huh,” Damon commented. After a moment he recovered. “Pretty slow. Back up, let me show you what _this_ supernatural creature can do.” With a burst of speed he whirled around the room, snatching up fallen books and shoving them onto shelves. Within seconds they had all been put away and he was feeling pretty smug.

His conversational companion disagreed, however. _NO NO NO!!!_ shouted the whiteboard. _Hurt, wrong order!_

“What? I didn’t _hurt_ the books!” Damon claimed, though he might have been wrong. “And—who cares what order they’re in—“

 _Always careless boy_ , the Scrabble tiles reminded him, with just a hint of contempt that made his jaw tighten.

“Frances always had a stick up her a-s about books,” he muttered grumpily. “Books are a dime a dozen these days, no need to flip out. If one’s damaged I’ll just buy another.” A thought occurred to him. “Do you—can you read books? Now?”

Shakily one of the books worked itself off the shelf, falling to the floor with a thump. “And you worry about _me_ hurting them,” he commented, rolling his eyes. The book opened, its cracked spine allowing it to lay flat on the floor, and the pages fluttered. “I guess that’s a yes,” he decided. “Frances _did_ love to read…”

 _My favorite book?_ asked the whiteboard.

“Oh, we’re having a little quiz time now, huh?” Damon surmised pointedly. “Okay, but I get to ask questions, too.” He gave her inquiry some thought. “Well, Frances was always a little geek. She loved Darwin’s _Origin of Species,_ and I got her Faraday’s _Chemical History of a Candle_ for Christmas one year. It was really hard to get a copy of, what with all the naval blockades,” he recalled after a moment. “And then for a bit of lighter reading she liked that stupid Elizabethan sea adventure novel about that guy searching for gold in the Caribbean, who goes blind after getting struck by lightning. Also _House of the Seven Gables_ , which is just a smidge ironic now.” He finished his speech, then waited for the reaction. Well, what was he expecting, applause or something? Of course he’d gotten it right; if this _was_ Frances, she’d know he was right, and if it wasn’t, he’d said it with enough confidence that they couldn’t contradict him.

Still, the lack of response was unnerving.

He walked into the kitchen searching for a new message. _Varney the Vampire_ , the magnet letters read.

Instantly he was transported back in time, sneaking off to the hayloft with a tattered, yellowed copy of a penny dreadful he’d found in the attic, eagerly reading the next trashy and contradictory chapter in the saga of Sir Francis Varney, a vampire who tormented an upper-crust British family while nursing his own sense of self-loathing. Who had it belonged to originally? One of his mother’s brothers perhaps, visiting from Europe—

Damon blinked, returning himself to the present. No one could have known about that. Maybe Stefan, but he was little then and easily scared. He distinctly remembered telling Frances about it though, secretly loving her snooty exasperation.

Damon’s throat felt suddenly dry and he yanked the fridge door open, desperately hoping Mrs. Morris had been a beer drinker.

Well, Ensure was pretty close.

“I wouldn’t have said that was my _favorite_ ,” he finally protested, but with less argument than he would’ve liked.

 _Smidge ironic tho_ , said the Scrabble tiles. A couple of the chairs had also been righted, he noticed.

“Okay, it’s _my_ turn to ask a question,” he insisted.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unfinished flashback scene

Damon did not think John Hawkins had had a limp when he first came to Mystic Falls. Or at least, it had increased in prominence since the War started, making a convenient excuse for why he hadn’t joined the Army, even as a surgeon. Damon himself had no convenient excuse; but he felt he was at least better than those who had simply made one up. This opinion was not universally shared, however.

He walked unerringly across the dark lawn towards the voices near the magnolia tree, away from the light and music of the dance. People around here were always throwing parties at the most inappropriate times, he thought sourly. They claimed they were a distraction from dark recent events, but really, they just set the stage for more confrontation and unrest.

Case in point. “Frances, how thoughtless of you,” Damon chided, announcing his presence to the pair. “Keeping Dr. Hawkins on his feet like that. His leg must be aching by now.”

Frances knew he was not at all concerned with Dr. Hawkins’s leg. But there was little else she could say except, “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Doctor. He’s correct, I wasn’t thinking at all.”

“Er, no, it’s alright,” Hawkins insisted. “I only just joined Miss Briggs,” he added to Damon. “And please, call me John.”

The last remark was directed at Frances; but Damon pretended he hadn’t noticed. “Oh, Father would tan my hide if he caught me calling a _doctor_ by his first name,” he claimed. “It’s a matter of respect, really. Here’s your punch you asked for,” he added to Frances, pressing the small cut-glass cup on her.

“Oh, well, thank you,” she replied, almost not giving any hint that she _hadn’t_ asked for punch.

Damon turned to Hawkins with a pointed look that suggested the doctor had interrupted them and should now leave; but Hawkins was a perceptive, persistent fellow. “How’s your brother doing?” he asked Damon with professional concern. “Dr. Reilly and I were just discussing his case the other day—“

He knew exactly how to push Damon’s buttons, and Damon hated that it worked so well. “He’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with him,” he replied, more sharply than the question had really warranted. “There’s no _case_ to discuss—“

“Now Damon, _you’re_ being the thoughtless one,” Frances chided, slipping her arm smoothly through his. “Boring Dr. Hawkins with medical talk at a party! You should let him go instead of monopolizing him.”

Her comment bore no relation to reality, of course, but it was politely rendered and one did not contradict a lady under those circumstances. Her meaning was clear, at any rate, and Hawkins had no choice but to withdraw. “A charming conversation, miss,” he complimented her by way of farewell. “I hope we can continue it later. Damon,” he added with a nod. Then he turned and limped back towards the house.

“’Damon,’” Damon mocked, possibly before the doctor was quite out of earshot. “Like I’m a child—“

“I can’t imagine what would give him _that_ impression,” Frances commented dryly. “ _Perhaps_ it was your childish behavior?”

Damon rolled his eyes and started walking, pulling Frances along. “He’s so arrogant and obnoxious,” he judged. “Asking about Stefan like he’s some kind of invalid—“

“You took an immediate dislike to Dr. Hawkins when he first came to town,” Frances pointed out. “What troubles you so about him?”

Damon didn’t really know. And he didn’t really care. “I’m not the only one,” he reminded Frances. “Other people say he has Yankee leanings. He’s from _Boston_ , after all.”

Frances clearly did not find his reasoning compelling but it wasn’t worth arguing, either. She tried to take a sip of the punch he’d brought her only to realize—“The cup is empty!”

“Of course. I drank it all,” Damon replied, as if it should be obvious. “Oh, are you thirsty?” The thought had only just occurred to him. “I guess I could wait here while you get a drink.” He left the cup carelessly in a bush and walked on.

“You are _such_ a gentleman,” Frances assured him.

“I am. If we come to a puddle, I’ll lift you over it,” he promised. “But I’m not going back to the house just for punch. I would probably _punch_ Prudence Doerr in the face—“

“Oh, for goodness sake,” Frances interrupted. “A gentleman should never even joke about striking a lady. That task should be left _entirely_ to other ladies.”

Damon grinned suddenly. “How come I haven’t seen you around the house lately, Frankie?” he asked. “I miss your funny little jokes. Father’s all doom and gloom and moral platitudes.”

“I haven’t been to the house lately because no one’s invited me,” she pointed out, pinching his arm slightly.

“Oh. Ow!”

She was unmoved by his pain. “I’ve asked you to stop calling me that unflattering nickname,” she reminded him.

“I didn’t think you were serious about that,” Damon claimed. “Why don’t you invite Stefan and I over for tea sometime? But not Father. And have your brother bring that black mare in, so he and Stefan can go off and play with it. Oh, and if your mother could make those little strawberry cakes again—“

Frances laughed suddenly, cutting him off. “Do you want to plan the entire social event for me?” she teased.

“It’s not a social event, it’s just tea,” he countered dismissively. “Any reason to get out from under Father’s relentless gaze.”

“Yes, such a gentleman,” Frances repeated dryly.

“Ladies shouldn’t be sarcastic.”

“You leave ladies little choice.”

Damon smirked but was oddly silent for several steps. “I haven’t seen you at _all_ lately,” he finally remarked. “Anywhere. Even at _church_.” He masked his earnest inquiry with a mocking tone bordering on the sacrilegious.

“Father’s been ill,” she replied, more serious than he was expecting.

“Oh. Do you need help with the chores?” Damon offered. “I would send Midas over.”

Frances huffed predictably at his not-so-unselfish gesture, but smiled when she saw his knowing grin. “He’s not really _that_ ill,” she confessed, “but I haven’t really missed Pastor Hammond’s sermons lately. Has he changed his tone at all?”

“I don’t know, I usually fall asleep,” Damon shrugged irreverently.

“He just seems to… glory in war,” she went on with a grimace. “In the death of the ‘enemy.’ As if we were not all one nation just a few years ago.”

Damon saw her point, and it was a fine point for a lady to make. But in reality—“The North has always tried to tell us what to do,” he complained. “Nobody likes to be told what to do.”

“Some of us bear it better than others,” Frances replied wryly.

“ _I_ don’t like to be told what to do—“ He cut himself off as the next logical thought hit him— _then why are you still here?_ The town was nearly emptied of able-bodied young men his age, off telling the North just what it could do with its high-handed attitude. But he hadn’t joined them.

But Frances would never say anything like that to him. “I’m glad you’re still here,” she told him instead, suddenly giving him a bold, fierce hug. “It just—it seems so pointless—“ Her older brother Jacob, to whom she was close, had been one of Mystic Falls’s first casualties in the War; the Briggs family had been notably absent at pro-War functions since then. With no slaves and no cotton and little money, they’d already contributed their best.


End file.
